China Telecom is awaiting a major restructuring of the Chinese telecom industry that will see China Unicom divided in two and handed over to landline leaders China Telecom and China Netcom. That restructuring has been rumored for months, but may not happen until after the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics. In any case, the change will come none to soon for China Telecom, which reported that its net profit dropped about 13 percent last year, as revenue from local phone services was down about 9.8 percent. The primary culprit in an ongoing decline for the telco has been its loss of customers moving to mobile.
For more:
- see this Associated Press report at The New York Times
Related article:
- A formal word on China's telecom industry changes has been much-anticipated